Reviews Around The Web

Monday, June 14, 2010

The market for Radeon HD 5870 video cards has matured since the launch of this top-tier GPU in September of 2009. Development has continued on both the hardware side and the software side of the ATI family, and the ASUS EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2 is one of several new 58xx series cards released by ATI AIB partners in the last few months that follow a new design pattern. The complexity of the 5870 reference design has given way to a more focused approach. A robust power supply, an efficient cooling package, and a simpler system for voltage control; all add up to a bigger bang for the buck, higher reliability and more headroom for overclocking. Several vendors have been trying to find the right recipe for maximizing the value proposition of the Radeon HD5870, and this time Benchmark Reviews is going to look very closely at the second generation Voltage Tweak EAH5870 model from ASUS.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The recent switch from analog to digital television was mainly driven by the benefits of digital technology over its analog predecessor. Though digital television has become ubiquitous the conversion cannot be instantaneous, nor will analog technology simply vanish. During this transitional period of converting analog infrastructures into a digital foundation, hybrid devices like the My Cinema PHC3-150 Combo TV-Tuner Card will be essential. These hybrid devices work with both signal types allowing for a smoother transition. In this article Benchmark Reviews tests the performance of the PHC3-150. Even if you've already made the transition to digital systems you may want to check out some tricks to extract even more utility from the hybrid features of this card.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

ASUS has been a longtime partner to Intel, and both companies have been made better because of their relationship. But when it comes to new technology, sometimes Intel takes a little too long to implement change while ASUS prefers to offer their faithful consumers the options right away. Intel's tick-tock plan doesn't coincide with the technical improvements made to areas outside of processor development, such as SuperSpeed USB-3.0 or Revision 3.x SATA 6.0-Gbps (aka SATA-III) controllers. Most hardware enthusiasts agree that it's awkward to see Intel's "Enthusiast" branded X58-Express chipset paired to older standards while "Mainstream" P55 motherboards enjoy the better and faster new ones. ASUS feels the same way, and now offers their P6X58D-Premium motherboard to forward-thinking enthusiasts who might not want to wait for the launch of Intel's X68-Express platform. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests several X58-based ! motherboard against the ASUS P6X58D-Premium in heat-to-head graphics, processor, memory, and SSD storage performance.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

In terms of target market, the ASUS P7H55D-M EVO board fits the bill as the cornerstone of a digital home theater PC. The integrated graphics are good enough to run Blu-ray discs when paired with a powerful processor like the Core i5-661 CPU used in the testing. The board has the HDMI outputs that most HDTVs have on the market today and also has a DVI-D and VGA for monitor connections. The integrated graphics is only adequate at best for gaming, with casual gaming titles and mainstream gaming titles a good fit for the limited graphics. If you want to build a gaming computer with this motherboard you can, you'll need a CPU like the Core i7 870 plus a powerful graphics card like the Radeon HD 5870 or 5970 in the PCI Express x16 slot. The one downside of this board is the total lack of RAID, which is an option on the P55 and H57 chipsets.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

As enthusiasts, we're always interested in the latest monster video cards: the expensive, high-end products that blast through benchmarks and play all your games with buttery-smooth frame rates at the highest resolutions with all the settings maxed out- and sucking a not inconsiderable amount of electricity while doing so! But these products represent only a tiny fraction of the number of video cards sold; the low-to-mid-end cards comprise the bulk of the market. Besides, a GTX285 or Radeon 5870 isn't the ideal solution for every situation: considerations from a limited budget to building a small, quiet system come into play. NVIDIA has been filling out the low-middle end of their video card product line lately, and in this article Benchmark Reviews tests the ASUS ENGT240/DI/1GD3/A video card equipped with with NVIDIA's new GeForce GT240 GPU and 1GB of GDDR3 memory.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

ASUS shows with the P7P55D-E Premium its first mainboard that
features USB 3.0 as well as 6 GB/s SATA. Furthermore they seem to
litterally wait for extreme overclockers to set new world records due
to the massive 32 phases power design.

Monday, October 26, 2009

"A netbook makes a fine travel notebook to check up on e-mail, find night life destinations on Google maps, and tap out a few quick journal entries, but for heavy lifting, Intel's Atom is a garden trowel where a backhoe is needed. Yet for anyone who needs a little more, there's an awfully intimidating price gap to leap to get to a full-fledged Intel Core 2 Duo machine, and when you get to the other side, the weight might have you wishing for your Atom back. A quickly growing crop of machines using Intel's CULV processors have sprouted up to fill that gap, offering power and portability somewhere in between netbook and notebook. We tried out Asus' freshman offering in the field, the aluminum-skinned UL30A."

Friday, September 18, 2009

"Although typically known for their motherboards and graphics cards, ASUS also has produced a line of sound cards as well. Today, we will be looking at one of their high end offerings, the ASUS Xonar D2X to find out whether ASUS has been able bring the quality their name is known for to the sound card market as well."

Thursday, September 17, 2009

ASUS launched nothing less than nine different socket 1156 motherboard models based on the new Intel P55 chipset. Today we are going to take a look on one that is currently being sold on the USD 170 range, called P7P55D PRO, which has lots of unique features and includes support for SLI."

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

"With the release of the X58 chipset around 10 months ago, a lot has changed in the world of computer hardware. Suddenly, gamers and hardcore enthusiasts were able to purchase a motherboard which supported both SLI and CrossFire, were able to run memory in an all-new triple-channel scenario and last but not least, make use of the awesome performance the i7 series processor offered. Although many would have liked to upgrade to the X58/i7 platform, doing it inexpensively was one of the largest roadblocks caused by this new technology.
Fortunately, ASUS and a few other motherboard manufacturers cottoned onto the crisis hardware enthusiasts were experiencing and decided to shred features that many users didn?t need from their top-end motherboards in order to make more affordable versions. This opened a new window of opportunity for enthusiasts to migrate from their current systems to the performance driven i7/X58 combinations without breaking the bank.
One of the most popular X58 motherboard which supports the i7 processor series is the ASUS P6T board. In many reviews and tests it has delivered outstanding performance and has proven to be a favourite amongst overclockers. ASUS immediately became aware of this success and developed the ASUS P6T SE (Second Edition). The SE was designed to be a cheaper alternative to the original P6T and was made possible by removing SLI support (so CrossFire only), downgrading the capacitors and removing a couple of needless features. Today we hope to find out if the £25 price difference between the P6T SE and its elder brother is money worth saving. Let?s see how the sibling performs?"